Writing...
Aug. 22nd, 2006 01:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cedar_groveHere is the update I said I might do of where I am at with my writing. My writing time is about to become limited by the start of the new school year, but maybe I'll find some time during recess and so on to do the odd jotting here and there, and I'll try to write at least one or two hours per day after work (Marking permitting).
Star of the Morning Post Mummy Returns
Last in the Trilogy broadly titled Sacrifice to the Old Gods
Chapter 9 of 17 written
This is a far more 'serious' story than the others. I've noticed that I don't quite have as many lines referenced in this one as I did the others, but that fits really. The young heir to the Medjai has been Kidnapped; the Medjai have split into two factions, those that follow Elder Mohammed and those still loyal to Ardeth and the old gods of Egypt and their fearsome warriors are stepping into our world to settle old scores and cleanse the world of curses that once again walk the land. This, I guess, is the first of my 'crossovers' though I think I'll assume the invented word 'subsume-over' since the characters have not originated in this universe. There are a lot of loose ends to tie up with the remainder of the story - things that have happened in the last two that have not already been tidied away. Expect mayhem, murder, death and ressurection.... oh, and sacrifice - don't forget that.
Forbidden between Mummy and Mummy Returns
Started in response to a challenge from someone to explain how Ardeth and Loch Nah had met before TMR.
Chapter 13 of ?? written
To this point I have disliked writing this story... I don't like my main character, she annoys the hell out of me - yeah, I know she's /supposed/ to, but still... Anyway, chapter 13 saw the addition of a new element which has somewhat enlivened the story for me... that and the pesky Melleha will take a back seat for a while as the rest of the story progresses. Meela is using everyone she comes into contact with so that she can get into Hamunaptra and find out where the body of Imhotep is buried, meanwhile Farhas is continuing his war with the Medjai and now, not only is Ardeth in a position where he must either take a second wife or a concubine in order to produce his heir,since Melleha can bear no more children after the difficult birth of their daughter, but his beloved cousin Zhadina, has been kidnapped - and her father prays that she is dead rather than in the hands of the Farhaseed. Francis has dragged Celia back to Egypt, and of course you /know/ there's going to be trouble there... So everything is moving at last... perhaps it will be easier to write now.
Precious Mummy universe
Chapter 5 of ?? written
I guess this is one for those people that complained to me that my story chapters were all too long. Each chapter is only about 6 pages in Word. It's essentially a story of rivalry between Ardeth and his brother Rahab, an outcast from the Medjai. There is no supernatural stuff in this, and it might well be the story where I end up killing Ardeth and him staying dead. I've always threatened to do that and have not yet done so. There's a formula to the story that seems to have escaped some of the people that read the story on a certain website with a lot of Fs in its URL.
If... With No Choice UC:Undercover
Teaser of Part one written (2 part story with teaser and 4 acts in each part).
This is the last in a sequence of three UC stories. In this the past comes back to haunt Frank Donovan, endangering the lives of those he cares about and forcing him to take a course of action that he might never have considered in order to save them. It's about 4 years from the end of the previous story. Alex has left the team after recovering from the coma that she was in at the end of If...As We Try. Cody and Jake are both now 'married' and have children... so everyone has a lot to lose. It's all planned, with what happens when, all I have to do now is to pull it off. No mean feat, but I do set myself these challenges.
Nemesis Original Dark Fantasy/horror
It's too long, the Irin want me to write this but I don't know how. I've put it on the back burner, left it bubbling and maybe something will come of that mulling around in my unconscious. I've done so much research for this, and the premise is a good one, it's just finding the time to sit down and sort it all out. When it's hard to do it frustrates me, and I don't like to sit there with a blank page for too long. That's like inviting trouble. Of course it's not really a blank page, because mostly before I can go forward I have to edit what I've done to make it make sense. It's something I could maybe do ten or fifteen minutes each day. Little chunks and perhaps it won't seem so bad. But right now I'm more interested in other things... easier things... God knows what I'd do if I had a deadline.
Use'ara: Thirteen Stars - Finlay Original Sci-Fi/Fantasy
Here is my madness... my thirteen 'book' series... or at least the first one of them. The premise and the backstory and things have been growing in my mind over the past couple of years. It started as a simple one story - and the basic elements of that are still in here, but it was missing something and it was a story that has been 'done' before lots and lots of times. I needed something else... I needed something that would interest /me/ or it's end up like Forbidden, a chore to write rather than a pleasure. So anyway... Use'ara is a planet where the concept of Anima Mundi is /very/ real. Anything landing on the planet is immediately infected with a retrovirus that affects the DNA of the living organism, thus that organism becomes subsumed into the ecosystem of the planet itself. Technology that does not origniate from the planet stops working. Many thousands of years ago something happened on the planet that changed its inhabitants, making them less cohesive than they were, making life far more difficult and peace is only really maintained because the inhabitants of Use'ara recognise that there needs to be a certain contact between the different races to ensure their survival. Many of those races see the Eye of Use'ara watching them in the form of a thirteen star constellation that is fixed in a certain place in the sky. Then, one night as the calendar of Use'ara is approaching the time of descent - a time when all the peoples of the planet must descend into the caves at the centre of the land in order to escape the fires that will cleanse the land and begin the life cycle anew - something terrible (or mirraculous,depending on your point of view) occurs... the thirteen stars shoot across the sky and the constellation disappears. The inhabitants must find out what has happened, and why Lady Use'ara has 'closed her eye' to them. What have they done to court Her disapproval. Meanwhile, Twelve survival/stasis pods from a colonisation vessel and the remains of the system ship fall to Use'ara from where they were held in a gravitational and temporal eddy (or some such) by the action of the star system's twin suns... planetary positions progressing about their orbit has kept the ship and pods there for thousands of years, but now their allignment has released them, and they fall... The thirteen stories tell what happens to each of those pods inhabitants, and the effect they have on the peoples with whom they interract... the first being Finlay - a commander aboard the colony ship... and the last being ZHACIS... the human system interface who must learn to live without his system - and of course the mounting danger from the fact that the aligning planets in the system are raising the temperature on Use'ara to dangerous levels. During the course of the stories of course clues come about as to what happened to everyone and why there are only twelve pods remaining out of hundreds... It's ambitious, and it's still forming in my head, but there it is... The first draft of the first chapter is written.
Cast Me Into Morning Mummy universe
Ashna's story... This is what happens to Ashna after the ending of Star of the Morning and the second of my subsume-overs. I have a detailed plot written with a blow by blow of everything.
Grace of the Rose Mummy universe
Ayesha's story... This is both the backstory and the future story for the healer Ayesha who appears in the Sacrifice to the Old Gods trilogy. The third of my subsume-overs. I started toying with the first chapter in this before I decided I /must/ finish Star of the Morning first.
Then there are a list of titles which contain the seeds of their ideas within them... and partly formed ideas... a lot of which are Mummy related.
The Letter of the Law - an examination of Medjai culture really... with a bit of a twist.
Never Another Sunrise There's a sadness that is carried in that story... which might end up being only a vignette... who knows.
Til Death - A story of love and life and battle.
A Long Way From Home As the title suggests the story of a person who is not where they are supposed to be.
Nice Camel - "Hey O'Connell, Nice camel!" Beni said this in The Mummy. This is a story featuring O'Connel, Beni and a lot of trouble. It's intended to be humourous too, probably why I haven't written it yet.
Broken - My Heart
Broken - My Oath
Broken - My Soul
Broken - Redemtion Okay so those four are a sequence that can be summarised thusly. Medjai loses girl, goes a little mad and breaks his Medjai oaths. Tries to redeme himself but finds things only getting worse as the girl that was taken from him has settled into the life she was taken from and will not leave it for him... things progress, catastrophic events occur and Medjai and girl are reunited and he is able to regain his honour, and be healed.
Accidental Concubine What more do I need to say about that? Doesn't it speak for itself?
Circle of Tradition Another exploration of the importance of tradition.
Butterfly Some pesky person once posted a challenge to include "sleeps with butterflies" in a story somewhere. The Hero in this story is Mari - an institutionalised psychic/sensitive who has chosen to shut herself away because she is so sensitive that otherwise her sanity would be threatened. She is alive at a time when religion - seen as the cause of confict and war - has been outlawed and replaced by extreme government controls... (incidentally by a single global government)... but the psyche of mankind is rebelling - and strange things, strange crimes are happening... and an investigator turns to the psychic (whom he previously arrested and tried for the practise of religion) for help... together they discover that mankind cannot survive in a world bereft of spiritual comfort - nor will the powers they have abandoned... good /and/ evil alike... allow them to live in peace. (Incidentally, Vega, Mari lives in a climate controlled habitat within the institution along with small animals, birds and butterflies, which gravitate to her. She sleep with butterflies).
Gift Horse Beware spam Email promising vacations of a lifetime. They might not be what they seem to be. A story of abduction and sexual slavery... and a woman's attempt to combat the evil of a cult that perpetuates it.
Assignments:
There are three writing courses that I'm studying - all home study... I have therefore three assignments (that I'm failing to do because I'm writing so much other stuff.
1) Come up with 50 ideas based on observation of things around and overheard conversations.
2) Non fiction article outlines, and one completed article as well as magasine analysis.
3) Characters in Children's Stories. Invent a character that could be used in a children's story after studying ones in already published stories.
Phew... I think I need to go and lie down now. It would help if all of this writing came to something... it really would... but for that I have to 'put it out there,' and I haven't been doing that.
Star of the Morning Post Mummy Returns
Last in the Trilogy broadly titled Sacrifice to the Old Gods
Chapter 9 of 17 written
This is a far more 'serious' story than the others. I've noticed that I don't quite have as many lines referenced in this one as I did the others, but that fits really. The young heir to the Medjai has been Kidnapped; the Medjai have split into two factions, those that follow Elder Mohammed and those still loyal to Ardeth and the old gods of Egypt and their fearsome warriors are stepping into our world to settle old scores and cleanse the world of curses that once again walk the land. This, I guess, is the first of my 'crossovers' though I think I'll assume the invented word 'subsume-over' since the characters have not originated in this universe. There are a lot of loose ends to tie up with the remainder of the story - things that have happened in the last two that have not already been tidied away. Expect mayhem, murder, death and ressurection.... oh, and sacrifice - don't forget that.
Forbidden between Mummy and Mummy Returns
Started in response to a challenge from someone to explain how Ardeth and Loch Nah had met before TMR.
Chapter 13 of ?? written
To this point I have disliked writing this story... I don't like my main character, she annoys the hell out of me - yeah, I know she's /supposed/ to, but still... Anyway, chapter 13 saw the addition of a new element which has somewhat enlivened the story for me... that and the pesky Melleha will take a back seat for a while as the rest of the story progresses. Meela is using everyone she comes into contact with so that she can get into Hamunaptra and find out where the body of Imhotep is buried, meanwhile Farhas is continuing his war with the Medjai and now, not only is Ardeth in a position where he must either take a second wife or a concubine in order to produce his heir,since Melleha can bear no more children after the difficult birth of their daughter, but his beloved cousin Zhadina, has been kidnapped - and her father prays that she is dead rather than in the hands of the Farhaseed. Francis has dragged Celia back to Egypt, and of course you /know/ there's going to be trouble there... So everything is moving at last... perhaps it will be easier to write now.
Precious Mummy universe
Chapter 5 of ?? written
I guess this is one for those people that complained to me that my story chapters were all too long. Each chapter is only about 6 pages in Word. It's essentially a story of rivalry between Ardeth and his brother Rahab, an outcast from the Medjai. There is no supernatural stuff in this, and it might well be the story where I end up killing Ardeth and him staying dead. I've always threatened to do that and have not yet done so. There's a formula to the story that seems to have escaped some of the people that read the story on a certain website with a lot of Fs in its URL.
If... With No Choice UC:Undercover
Teaser of Part one written (2 part story with teaser and 4 acts in each part).
This is the last in a sequence of three UC stories. In this the past comes back to haunt Frank Donovan, endangering the lives of those he cares about and forcing him to take a course of action that he might never have considered in order to save them. It's about 4 years from the end of the previous story. Alex has left the team after recovering from the coma that she was in at the end of If...As We Try. Cody and Jake are both now 'married' and have children... so everyone has a lot to lose. It's all planned, with what happens when, all I have to do now is to pull it off. No mean feat, but I do set myself these challenges.
Nemesis Original Dark Fantasy/horror
It's too long, the Irin want me to write this but I don't know how. I've put it on the back burner, left it bubbling and maybe something will come of that mulling around in my unconscious. I've done so much research for this, and the premise is a good one, it's just finding the time to sit down and sort it all out. When it's hard to do it frustrates me, and I don't like to sit there with a blank page for too long. That's like inviting trouble. Of course it's not really a blank page, because mostly before I can go forward I have to edit what I've done to make it make sense. It's something I could maybe do ten or fifteen minutes each day. Little chunks and perhaps it won't seem so bad. But right now I'm more interested in other things... easier things... God knows what I'd do if I had a deadline.
Use'ara: Thirteen Stars - Finlay Original Sci-Fi/Fantasy
Here is my madness... my thirteen 'book' series... or at least the first one of them. The premise and the backstory and things have been growing in my mind over the past couple of years. It started as a simple one story - and the basic elements of that are still in here, but it was missing something and it was a story that has been 'done' before lots and lots of times. I needed something else... I needed something that would interest /me/ or it's end up like Forbidden, a chore to write rather than a pleasure. So anyway... Use'ara is a planet where the concept of Anima Mundi is /very/ real. Anything landing on the planet is immediately infected with a retrovirus that affects the DNA of the living organism, thus that organism becomes subsumed into the ecosystem of the planet itself. Technology that does not origniate from the planet stops working. Many thousands of years ago something happened on the planet that changed its inhabitants, making them less cohesive than they were, making life far more difficult and peace is only really maintained because the inhabitants of Use'ara recognise that there needs to be a certain contact between the different races to ensure their survival. Many of those races see the Eye of Use'ara watching them in the form of a thirteen star constellation that is fixed in a certain place in the sky. Then, one night as the calendar of Use'ara is approaching the time of descent - a time when all the peoples of the planet must descend into the caves at the centre of the land in order to escape the fires that will cleanse the land and begin the life cycle anew - something terrible (or mirraculous,depending on your point of view) occurs... the thirteen stars shoot across the sky and the constellation disappears. The inhabitants must find out what has happened, and why Lady Use'ara has 'closed her eye' to them. What have they done to court Her disapproval. Meanwhile, Twelve survival/stasis pods from a colonisation vessel and the remains of the system ship fall to Use'ara from where they were held in a gravitational and temporal eddy (or some such) by the action of the star system's twin suns... planetary positions progressing about their orbit has kept the ship and pods there for thousands of years, but now their allignment has released them, and they fall... The thirteen stories tell what happens to each of those pods inhabitants, and the effect they have on the peoples with whom they interract... the first being Finlay - a commander aboard the colony ship... and the last being ZHACIS... the human system interface who must learn to live without his system - and of course the mounting danger from the fact that the aligning planets in the system are raising the temperature on Use'ara to dangerous levels. During the course of the stories of course clues come about as to what happened to everyone and why there are only twelve pods remaining out of hundreds... It's ambitious, and it's still forming in my head, but there it is... The first draft of the first chapter is written.
Cast Me Into Morning Mummy universe
Ashna's story... This is what happens to Ashna after the ending of Star of the Morning and the second of my subsume-overs. I have a detailed plot written with a blow by blow of everything.
Grace of the Rose Mummy universe
Ayesha's story... This is both the backstory and the future story for the healer Ayesha who appears in the Sacrifice to the Old Gods trilogy. The third of my subsume-overs. I started toying with the first chapter in this before I decided I /must/ finish Star of the Morning first.
Then there are a list of titles which contain the seeds of their ideas within them... and partly formed ideas... a lot of which are Mummy related.
The Letter of the Law - an examination of Medjai culture really... with a bit of a twist.
Never Another Sunrise There's a sadness that is carried in that story... which might end up being only a vignette... who knows.
Til Death - A story of love and life and battle.
A Long Way From Home As the title suggests the story of a person who is not where they are supposed to be.
Nice Camel - "Hey O'Connell, Nice camel!" Beni said this in The Mummy. This is a story featuring O'Connel, Beni and a lot of trouble. It's intended to be humourous too, probably why I haven't written it yet.
Broken - My Heart
Broken - My Oath
Broken - My Soul
Broken - Redemtion Okay so those four are a sequence that can be summarised thusly. Medjai loses girl, goes a little mad and breaks his Medjai oaths. Tries to redeme himself but finds things only getting worse as the girl that was taken from him has settled into the life she was taken from and will not leave it for him... things progress, catastrophic events occur and Medjai and girl are reunited and he is able to regain his honour, and be healed.
Accidental Concubine What more do I need to say about that? Doesn't it speak for itself?
Circle of Tradition Another exploration of the importance of tradition.
Butterfly Some pesky person once posted a challenge to include "sleeps with butterflies" in a story somewhere. The Hero in this story is Mari - an institutionalised psychic/sensitive who has chosen to shut herself away because she is so sensitive that otherwise her sanity would be threatened. She is alive at a time when religion - seen as the cause of confict and war - has been outlawed and replaced by extreme government controls... (incidentally by a single global government)... but the psyche of mankind is rebelling - and strange things, strange crimes are happening... and an investigator turns to the psychic (whom he previously arrested and tried for the practise of religion) for help... together they discover that mankind cannot survive in a world bereft of spiritual comfort - nor will the powers they have abandoned... good /and/ evil alike... allow them to live in peace. (Incidentally, Vega, Mari lives in a climate controlled habitat within the institution along with small animals, birds and butterflies, which gravitate to her. She sleep with butterflies).
Gift Horse Beware spam Email promising vacations of a lifetime. They might not be what they seem to be. A story of abduction and sexual slavery... and a woman's attempt to combat the evil of a cult that perpetuates it.
Assignments:
There are three writing courses that I'm studying - all home study... I have therefore three assignments (that I'm failing to do because I'm writing so much other stuff.
1) Come up with 50 ideas based on observation of things around and overheard conversations.
2) Non fiction article outlines, and one completed article as well as magasine analysis.
3) Characters in Children's Stories. Invent a character that could be used in a children's story after studying ones in already published stories.
Phew... I think I need to go and lie down now. It would help if all of this writing came to something... it really would... but for that I have to 'put it out there,' and I haven't been doing that.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
some i've read ...
Date: 2006-08-22 08:55 pm (UTC)Good luck. And if you need prodding, yelling, encouragement, etc, let me know. I'm sure I'll be begging for some from you.
lehugs. have a safe flight tomorrow.